PRAISE FOR SUBS MOVE
SUBMARINERS are in the news and one bloke who knows his way around these underwater behemoths is Townsville engineer Andrew Turnour. Andrew was a contracting engineering manager on the construction of Australia’s six dieselelectric Collins Class subs from 1993 to 2003.
The subs met a $6bn budget and the people working on them became world leaders on many submarine manufacturing fronts.
They are still in use and were due to be replaced by six modernised diesel-electrics to be built by the French under a $90bn contract, but, whoopsy-daisy, that deal went south faster than you can say holy merde.
As you are probably well aware by now, the French have declared economic war on us, which means no more French loaves and frog’s legs for lunch, at least for the few weeks it will take them to get mad at someone else in the world. How will we cope?
As far as he is concerned the Australian government did the right thing and that we will end up with better submarines. Not only that, he says the taxpayer will get world class military and manufacturing skills “to future shape our great nation”.
His previous company Furmanite Pty Ltd Australia won the construction contract to do most of the precision machining work on the original Collins Class subs. This was extraordinary given that they were up against some of Europe’s biggest engineering powerhouses competing for the contract.
Winning the contract was mind blowing, but there was more in the form of new skills developed by the Australian specialists working on the project.
They didn’t take Mohammed to the mountain. They took the mountain to Mohammed.
“We did the six subs and in doing so we developed a lot of skills involving on-site machining. This is an art form where you take the machine shop to the submarine. From this we learnt that we can take a machine shop out to oil platforms, draglines, gas plants, nuclear power stations and the like,” Andrew said.
He said the submarines to be built under the now torpedoed French deal would have not been trialled before delivery.
Everything about them was newgeneration diesel-electric. They would be without product guarantees as the technology is what he describes as “new, next chapter”.
“There are no product warranties on new first-of-class products,” he said.
In other words there are no ironclad guarantees you are not getting dud subs.
He says the French design was certainly innovative, but no matter what, it still comes back to the fact the subs would not have pedigree.
“Pedigree is empirical and must be earned from time in service,” he said.
On the other hand, he says the US-UK nuclear submarines, the same ones Australia is now buying, are already in the field. “They have pedigree as they have trialled and tested technology,” Andrew said.
He says the ordering and overseeing of the construction of the US-UK designed submarines will be Australia’s “nuclear baptism”.
“Australia, over the next 20 to 30 years, has the opportunity to do the nuclear apprenticeship it needs to undertake. Australia might not have nuclear power, but it will end up with people skilled in nuclear applications,” he said.
Andrew says whether Australia buys the subs “off the rack” or leases them, remains to be seen.
“Whatever, the Australian government has done a good thing. They’ve got it right and this move now will save taxpayers a lot of money. And it will represent a technological leap forward for Australian industry. There are so many new skills that will be learned under this program,” he said.
VISIT REQUEST A NO GO
MEANWHILE, back in 2016 Andrew Turnour and the Townsville
Chapter of Engineers Australia, backed by Mayor Jenny Hill, wrote to the Defence Department asking them if they could bring one of the Collins Class subs to Townsville so that the Northern Australian public could see one close at hand.
They got a ‘ don’t call us, we’ll call you’ response. Pity, it would have been pretty cool having one of those 77 metre long Collins Class subs tied up in Ross Creek.
Andrew and his fellow engineers remain confident that one day it might happen. Who knows?
We might have to wait for one of the new nuclear subs to put in an appearance.
Holy merde, that’ll cause a stir.
TONY CALLS IT QUITS
CONTINUING on matters nautical. Well-known and very-much liked Sealink (Sun Ferries) deckhand Tony Wilson retired from duty yesterday after a whopping 42 years’ service. He has thrown his last rope and greeted his last customer.
The company is putting on a ‘do’ for him today at the Arcadia pub on Maggie. If you’re over there, pop in and say gidday.
He has worked for 10 different companies, starting with Hayles on the old timber boats at Christmas in 1979.
Before that he was a boner, working for Lord Vestey at his meatworks on the banks of Ross River and for the Tancred family at their boning room at the Port.
Happy retirement, Tony.